‘Education is the key to evolution’
MINISTER RALLIES FOR CHANGES IN SCHOOLS’ SECURITY SYSTEMS AND HEALTH-CARE FOR THOSE WHO CAN’T AFFORD IT
Following the recent cases of crime against children in schools, the Delhi government has ordered every school to install CCTV cameras on its premises. Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who holds several portfolios, including education and health, said: “All schools, whether government, municipal run or private, will have to mandatorily install CCTV cameras in classrooms, washrooms, corridors, stairways and playgrounds.”
The order was issued after the 45-year-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader held a meeting of school principals, police officers and heads of government departments, in wake of the killing of a seven-year-old boy in Gurgaon school and alleged rape of a five-year-old girl in her school in East Delhi.
Sisodia acknowledged his party is yet to make progress on a poll promise to provide CCTV cameras across the city. “It may take time, but we will make things happen,” he said.
Speaking to Gulf News in an exclusive interview, he stressed the need for safety and quality education for students.
What steps is your government taking for the safety of students in schools?
The schools are required to install CCTV cameras [on their] premises and submit monthly reports on the upkeep of these devices. Schools have also been asked to conduct police verification of their non-teaching staff and upload these on [a] portal of the DoE [Directorate of Education] within three weeks.
You hold several portfolios, but education seems the most significant.
For any society to evolve, education is the key. India has had a confused mindset for the past two centuries. Imagine, we gave the world eminent people like Gautam Buddha and Aryabhata, but then lost focus.
On coming to power, [the] AAP government allocated a historic 25 per cent of the total budget outlay to education, whereas previous governments never went beyond 10 per cent.
So how has funding helped?
Education is not about increasing funds. It’s about infrastructural facilities that were in shambles in government schools. On becoming minister, I visited schools and was shocked to find over 150 students in a class, which according to the Right To Education Act should have been limited to 40 students.
Therefore, my focus in the very first year was to provide better facilities to students. To the earlier figure of 31,000 classrooms, we added 8,000 and are working towards adding 10,000 more classrooms. That apart, 18 new schools have been opened.
What about the quality of teachers?
That’s precisely what I targeted in the second year. My philosophy is that if we want world-class education in India, we need to first facilitate that our teachers become familiar with education systems around the world. For that, we have been constantly sending batches of teachers to Cambridge, Harvard and educational institutions in Germany, Singapore, Moscow and Finland.
We [the government] are mere facilitators; teachers are the real pilots.
Are government school results in the Central Board of Secondary Education this year an indication of things to come?
Yes, Delhi government schools pass percentage was [the] highest in the country and we were much ahead compared to private schools. This year, I am focusing on the outcome of our efforts made during the second year. Our schools are preparing for the first halfyearly tests, wherein we have changed the learning process. The paper setters and examiners have been advised not to examine students by their [capacity for] rote learning. Instead, children will be evaluated on the basis of their subjective answers.
We are shifting goalposts.
Your other major focus has been health care. But we see India’s health-care system in relapse.
It’s like [this], when you don’t have the vision, [a] lot of people sell their own vision and you impose that upon your country. India has suffered due to this, both in the fields of education and health care. I tried to find out why private practitioners were doing brisk business and government health centres were a total failure. We studied the successful model and translated that in[to] the government set-up.
The result is the mohalla [neighbourhood] clinic — [ the] poor man’s one-stop solution to health woes. These clinics comprise efficient MBBS doctors, medicines and medical test facilities — all for free. For the 272 municipal wards in Delhi, we will have 1,000 mohalla clinics. Gradually, the number will increase to ensure each ward has at least four such clinics.